It's a happy 100th birthday for public health pioneer

Published 4:14 pm, Friday, April 12, 2013

James Steele says hello to well-wishers before a lecture in his honor at the University of Texas School of Public Health.

James Steele says hello to well-wishers before a lecture in his honor at the University of Texas School of Public Health.

Photo: Nick De La Torre, Staff

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Victor Ilegdobu, M.D., left, says hello to James Steele, M.D., before Steele, who's turning 100 today, gives a lecture in the University of Texas, Houston School of Public Health, Tuesday, April 2, 2013, in Houston. Ilegdobu says he was a student under Steele in 1982 and calls Steele his instructor, advisor, father, everything. ( Nick de la Torre / Chronicle ) less

Victor Ilegdobu, M.D., left, says hello to James Steele, M.D., before Steele, who's turning 100 today, gives a lecture in the University of Texas, Houston School of Public Health, Tuesday, April 2, 2013, in ... more

Photo: Nick De La Torre, Staff

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Steele served in the U.S. Public Health Service, where he would eventually become the first assistant surgeon general for veterinary affairs with the rank of rear admiral.

Steele served in the U.S. Public Health Service, where he would eventually become the first assistant surgeon general for veterinary affairs with the rank of rear admiral.

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Dr. James H. Steele joined the faculty of the University of Texas School of Public Health in 1971.

Dr. James H. Steele joined the faculty of the University of Texas School of Public Health in 1971.

Photo: --

It's a happy 100th birthday for public health pioneer

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During the Depression, when James Steele was working to buy groceries for his mother and brother, he met a young woman he wanted to marry.

She didn't know that he would become one of the most recognized veterinarians and public health officials in the world or that he would be instrumental in the effort to eliminate rabies in dogs and cats around the globe or that he would change his field forever by inextricably linking human health, animal health and economic health.

She just knew he was a dutiful son and that he had potential.

Steele, telling the story earlier this month, is surrounded by friends and colleagues celebrating his 100th birthday. It's not just the milestone that has drawn these professionals from as far as Africa and Europe but what he's accomplished and more specifically, what he's done for them.

"The story is a long story," Moon says. "When I studied public health in Korea, my dream was to see Dr. Steele. He was very famous in the world. When I came here to study, he was my professor, my mentor. Really, he was just like my father."

That sentiment is repeated many more times before the other reason for the gathering, the 21st annual lecture in Steele's honor.

Steele tells his life story in quick bursts.

He was born in Chicago April 3, 1913. His dad was a respected dentist until Prohibition. Then the older man filled his basement with whiskey and tried to drink it all.

"He became an alcoholic," Steele says. "He destroyed himself."

During the Depression, young Steele worked as a clerk in an insurance company to pay his family's bills. In the office, he met his wife-to-be, Aina Oberg, who encouraged him to go to college.

He started at Michigan State University, interested in environmental issues long before they were a field of study. At a cousin's suggestion, he switched from forestry to veterinary medicine.

"And it clicked with me," Steele says. "I could see that public health and animal health and the environment - all three - could fit in one career."

In 1941, Steele earned his veterinary degree, a fellowship to Harvard University's School of Public Health, and Aina's hand in marriage.

"Everything was coming together; we were so happy," Steele says.

But the carefree days wouldn't last. Aina contracted tuberculosis and spent seven years in a sanitorium.

Steele remembers a particularly blunt doctor who examined Aina, then came to talk to him in the waiting room.

"Young man," he said, "don't waste your life on her. She'll be dead in two years."

As Steele tells the story, he remembers the horror of that moment and the cruelty of the doctor, who turned out to be wrong. Aina would live until 1969. She and Steele would raise three sons. And he would pursue a career that took him to all corners of the globe.

During World War II, Steele was commissioned into the U.S. Public Health Service, where he would eventually become the first assistant surgeon general for veterinary affairs, then deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

He established the veterinary division of what would become the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and focused on rabies. He and his team improved the existing vaccine, then worked toward eliminating the disease in dogs and cats in the United States and around the world.

Steele also worked on other diseases that threatened both humans and animals, including bovine tuberculosis, brucellosis in cattle and the avian flu.

"He is the father of veterinary public health," says Dr. Joseph McCormick, regional dean and James H. Steele professor at the Brownsville regional campus of UT's School of Public Health. "He invented it - he made it part of CDC procedure. He understood that human health and veterinary health belong together. We depend on animals for food. They transport diseases to us, and we transport diseases to them."

Those ideas seem so obvious today, McCormick says, because of Steele and his work.

Steele devoted himself to his students and the writing of seven books on veterinary public health. Even after retirement in 1983, he continued his close relationship with the school, his colleagues, his students.

"They love me here," he says.

Today, Steele lives in a single room at Vosswood Nursing Center, where he gives his daily routine a "high B or low A."

On the negative side of the ledger, various body parts are failing. He uses a wheelchair and has a feeding tube in his stomach. He misses the taste of meat and martinis.

On the plus side, he has a floor-to-ceiling window that looks out on a ravine.

"The view at sunrise and sunset is worth $1,000," Steele says.

Steele also follows college sports, reads three newspapers a day and attends the symphony, ballet and opera with his wife, who is 84 and still living at their home.

And he keeps in contact with his many colleagues. If they don't contact him, he asks his executive assistant to send them an email.

But that doesn't happen too often. His friends are faithful correspondents.